11/21/2003 Entry: "Ashmolean Museum Embroidery Exhibition"

Curious Works in Oxford
Four centuries ago affluent girls used embroidery techniques to demonstrate their status. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum holds a unique collection of these 16th and 17th century decorative embroideries – or ‘curious’ works – the title of its forthcoming exhibition on the subject (January 14 – March 28).

Using silver metal threads, glossy silks, sequins, pearls, coral and glass beads - even real hair and peacocks' feathers - such girls would have spent hours stitching. They were making 'curious' works, that is decorative and fanciful embroideries rather than plain sewing or utilitarian needlework. Like many of today's rich darlings, these girls went to boarding school to learn how to make embroideries. Pepys records making a special trip to Hackney to ogle the schoolgirls at church, noting there was a 'great store, very pretty'.

The Ashmolean holds a particularly fine collection of these 16th and 17th century embroideries. They show biblical or classical heroes, kings and queens, and fashionable ladies and gentlemen set in landscapes crowded with outsize flowers, animals and insects. This exhibition allows us for the first time to study them in detail. Biblical or classical heroes; kings and queens; fashionable people; flowers and animals: these and more are depicted in remarkable detail using coloured thread, in some cases by girls as young as ten.

The exhibition, at Britain’s oldest public museum, will open daily, admission free.

Opening Times: Tuesdays to Saturdays: 10am to 5pm
Sundays: 2pm to 5pm (but not the Cast Gallery)
Bank Holidays: 2pm to 5pm
(But not all Bank Holidays -- please contact the Museum to be sure it is open before visiting)
Summer Evening Openings: During June, July and August the Museum stays open until 7.30pm on Thursday evenings

Location: The Museum is on Beaumont Street, opposite the Randolph Hotel

Website: www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk